And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An’ we was born here. There in the door – our children were born here. And Pa had to borrow money then. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and got a little bit of what we raised.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. When the landowners tell the tenant families that they must quit the land that they have been farming for generations, they react angrily. We learn that the bank got ownership of the land when the tenants had to borrow money in a bad year. But we should also note how the tenants acquired the land in the first place: they killed Indians and drove them off the land. It is ironic that the same thing is now happening to them.